Category:English dictionaries

This category is for articles related to specific monolingual dictionaries and glossaries in English and of unidirectional two-language dictionaries in which the headwords are in English.

Note:

Articles related to specific bidirectional and bilingual dictionaries for various languages and which include English as of the language pairs should be listed in Category:English bilingual dictionaries and in a parallel category for the other language used in the book the article is describing, e.g., Category:Swahili bilingual dictionaries or Category:Maori bilingual dictionaries

1.
Dictionary
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It is a lexicographical product which shows inter-relationships among the data. A broad distinction is made between general and specialized dictionaries, Specialized dictionaries include words in specialist fields, rather than a complete range of words in the language. Lexical items that describe concepts in specific fields are called terms instead of words. In practice, the two approaches are used for both types, there are other types of dictionaries that do not fit neatly into the above distinction, for instance bilingual dictionaries, dictionaries of synonyms, and rhyming dictionaries. The word dictionary is usually understood to refer to a general purpose monolingual dictionary, there is also a contrast between prescriptive or descriptive dictionaries, the former reflect what is seen as correct use of the language while the latter reflect recorded actual use. Stylistic indications in many modern dictionaries are also considered by some to be less than objectively descriptive, the birth of the new discipline was not without controversy, the practical dictionary-makers being sometimes accused by others of astonishing lack of method and critical-self reflection. The oldest known dictionaries were Akkadian Empire cuneiform tablets with bilingual Sumerian–Akkadian wordlists, discovered in Ebla, the early 2nd millennium BCE Urra=hubullu glossary is the canonical Babylonian version of such bilingual Sumerian wordlists. Philitas of Cos wrote a pioneering vocabulary Disorderly Words which explained the meanings of rare Homeric and other words, words from local dialects. Apollonius the Sophist wrote the oldest surviving Homeric lexicon, the first Sanskrit dictionary, the Amarakośa, was written by Amara Sinha c. 4th century CE. Written in verse, it listed around 10,000 words, according to the Nihon Shoki, the first Japanese dictionary was the long-lost 682 CE Niina glossary of Chinese characters. The oldest existing Japanese dictionary, the c.835 CE Tenrei Banshō Meigi, was also a glossary of written Chinese, a 9th-century CE Irish dictionary, Sanas Cormaic, contained etymologies and explanations of over 1,400 Irish words. In India around 1320, Amir Khusro compiled the Khaliq-e-bari which mainly dealt with Hindavi, in medieval Europe, glossaries with equivalents for Latin words in vernacular or simpler Latin were in use. The Catholicon by Johannes Balbus, a large grammatical work with a lexicon, was widely adopted. It served as the basis for several bilingual dictionaries and was one of the earliest books to be printed, in 1502 Ambrogio Calepinos Dictionarium was published, originally a monolingual Latin dictionary, which over the course of the 16th century was enlarged to become a multilingual glossary. The first monolingual dictionary written in Europe was the Spanish, written by Sebastián Covarrubias Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, published in 1611 in Madrid, in 1612 the first edition of the Vocabolario dellAccademia della Crusca, for Italian, was published. It served as the model for works in French and English. In 1690 in Rotterdam was published, posthumously, the Dictionnaire Universel by Antoine Furetière for French, in 1694 appeared the first edition of the Dictionnaire de lAcadémie française. Between 1712 and 1721 was published the Vocabulario portughez e latino written by Raphael Bluteau, the Totius Latinitatis lexicon by Egidio Forcellini was firstly published in 1777, it has formed the basis of all similar works that have since been published

2.
Bilingual dictionary
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A bilingual dictionary or translation dictionary is a specialized dictionary used to translate words or phrases from one language to another. Bilingual dictionaries can be unidirectional, meaning that they list the meanings of words of one language in another, or can be bidirectional, allowing translation to, bidirectional bilingual dictionaries usually consist of two sections, each listing words and phrases of one language alphabetically along with their translation. In addition to the translation, a bilingual dictionary usually indicates the part of speech, gender, verb type, declension model, other features sometimes present in bilingual dictionaries are lists of phrases, usage and style guides, verb tables, maps and grammar references. In contrast to the dictionary, a monolingual dictionary defines words. The Roman Emperor Claudius is known to have compiled an Etruscan-Latin dictionary, one substantial bilingual dictionary was the Mahāvyutpatti. Dictionaries from Hebrew and Aramaic into medieval French were composed in the European Jewish communities in the 10th century CE and these were used for understanding and teaching the Talmud and other Jewish texts. The most important challenge for practical and theoretical lexicographers is to define the functions of a bilingual dictionary, a bilingual dictionary works to help users translate texts from one language into another or to help users understand foreign-language texts. In such situations users will require the dictionary to contain different types of data that have been selected for the function in question. If the dictionary is intended to translate texts, it will need to include not only equivalents but also collocations. The British lexicographer Robert Ilson gives example definitions from the Collins-Robert French-English English-French Dictionary, both phrases can be understood reasonably well from their constituents and have fairly obvious contrasts with garde urbain in French or with urban policeman in English. But garde champêtre has a specific unpredictable contrast within the system of French. But a gendarme is a member of a police force that is technically part of the French Army whereas a garde champêtre is employed by a local commune. Rural policeman has no such contrast, for example, in English, a ticket can provide entrance to a movie theater, authorize a bus or train ride, or can be given to you by a police officer for exceeding the posted speed limit. Recently, a method for the disambiguation of the entries of bilingual dictionaries has been proposed that makes use of specific kinds of graphs. As a result, translations in each entry of the dictionary are assigned the specific sense they refer to, to mitigate the problem of one word having multiple meanings and its translation having multiple, but not necessarily corresponding meanings, the user should perform a reverse lookup. Reverse lookups can usually be performed faster with Dictionary programs and online dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries are available in a number of formats, and often include a grammar reference and usage examples. Printed dictionaries – Printed dictionaries range from small pocket-sized editions to large, Dictionary programs – software that allows words or phrases to be input and translated on computers and smart phones. Visual dictionaries – A visual dictionary is a dictionary that relies primarily on illustrations to provide the user with a reliable way of identifying the correct translation

3.
The Devil's Dictionary
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The lexicon was written over three decades as a series of installments for magazines and newspapers. Initial reception of the versions was mixed. In the decades following, however, the stature of The Devils Dictionary grew and it has been widely quoted, frequently translated, and often imitated, earning a global reputation. In the 1970s, The Devils Dictionary was named as one of The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration, wall Street Journal columnist Jason Zweig said that The Devils Dictionary is probably the most brilliant work of satire written in America. And maybe one of the greatest in all of world literature, Ambrose Bierce was not the first writer to use amusing definitions as a format for satire. Four writers are known to have written witty definitions of words before him, Bierces earliest known predecessor was the Persian poet and satirist Nizam al-Din Ubaydullah Zakani, who wrote his satirical Tarifat in the thirteenth century. Prior to Bierce, the most well-known writer of amusing definitions was Samuel Johnson and his A Dictionary of the English Language was published 15 April 1755. Johnsons Dictionary defined 42,733 words, almost all seriously, a small handful have witty definitions and became widely quoted, but they were infrequent exceptions to Johnson’s learned and serious explanations of word meanings. Noah Webster earned fame for his 1806 A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, most people assume that Websters text is unrelieved by humor, but, Webster made witty comments in a tiny number of definitions. Gustave Flaubert wrote notes for the Dictionary of Received Ideas between 1850 and 1855 but never completed it. ”Bierce took decades to write his lexicon of satirical definitions. He warmed up by including definitions infrequently in satirical essays, most often in his weekly columns “The Town Crier” or “Prattle. ”His earliest known definition was published in 1867 and his first try at a multiple-definition essay was titled “Webster Revised”. It included definitions of four terms and was published in early 1869. Bierce also wrote definitions in his personal letters. ”By summer of 1869 he had conceived of the idea of something more substantial, “Could any one but an American humorist ever have conceived the idea of a Comic Dictionary. ”Bierce did not make his first start at writing a satirical glossary until six years later. He called it “The Demons Dictionary, ” and it appeared in the San Francisco News Letter and his glossary provided 48 short witty definitions, from “A” through “accoucheur. ”But “The Demons Dictionary” appeared only once, and Bierce wrote no more satirical lexicons for another six years. Even so, Bierce’s short glossary spawned imitators, One of the most substantial was written by Harry Ellington Brook, the editor of a humor magazine called The Illustrated San Francisco Wasp. Brooks continuing column of serialized satirical definitions was called “Wasps Improved Webster in Ten-Cent Doses. ”The column started with the 7 August 1880 issue and appeared weekly in 28 issues, working its way step-by-step alphabetically to define 758 words, ending with “shoddy” in the 26 February 1881 issue. In the next issue of The Wasp Brooks column appeared no more, because The Wasp hired Bierce and he stopped it, Bierce named his column “The Devils Dictionary. ”It first appeared in the March 5,1881 issue. Bierce wrote 79 “The Devils Dictionary” columns, working his way alphabetically to the word “lickspittle” in the 14 Aug.1886 issue, after Bierce left The Wasp, he was hired by William Randolph Hearst to write for his newspaper The San Francisco Examiner in 1887

4.
Century Dictionary
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The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia was one of the largest encyclopedic dictionaries of the English language. The first edition was published from 1889 to 1891 by The Century Company of New York, in six, eight and it was edited by Sanskrit scholar and linguist William Dwight Whitney, with Benjamin Eli Smiths assistance. It was an expansion of the smaller Imperial Dictionary of the English Language. After Whitneys death in 1894, supplementary volumes were published under Smiths supervision, including The Century Cyclopedia of Names, a two-volume Supplement of new vocabulary, published in 1909, completed the dictionary. A reformatted edition, The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia, was published in 1911 in twelve volumes, ten of vocabulary, plus the volume of names. This set went through several printings, the last in 1914, the same year, the ten vocabulary volumes were published as one giant volume, about 8500 pages in a very thin paper. The now much coveted India paper edition also appeared around this time, the completed dictionary contained over 500,000 entries, more than Websters New International or Funk and Wagnalls New Standard, the largest other dictionaries of the period. Each form of a word was treated separately, and liberal numbers of quotations, in its etymologies, Greek words were not transliterated. The New Century became the basis for the American College Dictionary, the three volume New Century Cyclopedia of Names, an expansion of the 1894 volume, was published in 1954, edited by Clarence Barnhart. The Century Dictionary was admired for the quality of its entries, the craftsmanship in its design, typography, and binding, and its excellent illustrations. It has been used as a source for the makers of many later dictionaries, including editors of the Oxford English Dictionary. In 1913, Stewart Archer Steger from the University of Virginia published his Ph. D. dissertation American Dictionaries and he concluded the chapter with these words, Altogether, The Century Dictionary far surpasses anything in American lexicography. The works are out of copyright, and efforts have made to digitize the volumes. 1889–911911, University of Michigan and Cornell University Adams, James Truslow, forum, Centennial Celebration of The Century Dictionary. Dictionaries, Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America 17, the complete Century Dictionary is in image form, where it can be searched by the word or viewed by the page in its original form, with zoom-in option. The Century Dictionary, and Supplement online with easy word search

5.
Glossary
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A glossary, also known as a vocabulary or clavis, is an alphabetical list of terms in a particular domain of knowledge with the definitions for those terms. Traditionally, a glossary appears at the end of a book and includes terms within that book that are newly introduced, uncommon. While glossaries are most commonly associated with books, in some cases. A bilingual glossary is a list of terms in one language defined in a language or glossed by synonyms in another language. In a general sense, a glossary contains explanations of concepts relevant to a field of study or action. In this sense, the term is related to the notion of ontology, automatic methods have been also provided that transform a glossary into an ontology or a computational lexicon. A core glossary is a glossary or defining dictionary that enables definition of other concepts. It contains a working vocabulary and definitions for important or frequently encountered concepts. Computational approaches to the extraction of glossaries from corpora or the Web have been developed in the recent years. These methods typically start from domain terminology and extract one or more glosses for each term of interest, glosses can then be analyzed to extract hypernyms of the defined term and other lexical and semantic relations

6.
American College Dictionary
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The American College Dictionary was the first Random House dictionary and was later expanded to create the Random House Dictionary of the English Language. First published in 1947, The American College Dictionary was edited by Clarence Barnhart based on the 1927 New Century Dictionary, the Random House publishing company entered the reference book market after World War II. They acquired the rights to the Century Dictionary and the Dictionary of American English, many scholars participated in the development of the dictionary with over 300 specialists assisting. For medical and psychological in the dictionary, many physicians in the New York City area where Random House was headquartered gave their assistance. In 1947, the dictionary was published, being edited by Clarence Barnhart and was based primarily on The New Century Dictionary and it was originally sold for $5.00 and included 1432 pages. In the late 1950s, it was decided to publish an expansion of the American College Dictionary and it was the first dictionary to use computers in its compilation and typesetting. American writer, broadcaster, and logophile Charles Harrington Elster described the 1947 edition of the American College Dictionary as a landmark among dictionaries

7.
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
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The Revised and Updated Edition from the 1890s is now in the public domain, and web-based versions are available online. The most recent version is the 19th edition, published in August 2012 by Chambers Harrap Publishers, on top of this, Brewer added notes on important historical figures and events, and other things which he thought would be of interest, such as Roman numerals. Although intended as a reference work, early editions of Brewers are highly idiosyncratic. Some entries seem so trivial as to be worth including. Despite this inconsistency, however, the book was a success, providing information often not included in more traditional dictionaries. A revised and updated edition was published in 1896, shortly before Brewer died, since then, it has been continually revised and reprinted, often In Facsimile, with the 15th edition being the first to make truly wide-scale changes to the content. Editions of Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1st, E. Cobham Brewer, new Edition 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th, John Freeman 10th 11th Centenary Edition, revised by Ivor H. Evans. ISBN0304935700 14th 15th, Adrian Room, ISBN0062701339 16th Millenium Edition, Adrian Room. ISBN9780550102454 Brewers Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable, edited by Adrian Room, was first published in 2000, a second edition, edited by Ian Crofton and John Ayto, was published on 30 November 2010. While this title is based on the structure of Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, it contains entries from 1900 onwards, Brewers Dictionary of London Phrase and Fable was published in 2009 and Brewers Dictionary of Irish Phrase and Fable was reissued at the same time

8.
Collins English Dictionary
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The Collins English Dictionary is a printed and online dictionary of English. It is published by HarperCollins in Glasgow, by the third edition, they increasingly used the Bank of English established by Hanks at COBUILD to provide typical definitions rather than examples composed by the lexicographer. The current edition is the 12th edition, which was published in October 2014, the previous edition was the 11th edition, which was published in October 2011. A special 30th Anniversary 10th edition was published in 2010, with editions published once every 3–4 years. The unabridged Collins English Dictionary was published on the web on 31 December 2011 on CollinsDictionary. com, along with the dictionaries of French, German, Spanish. The site also includes example sentences showing word usage from the Collins Bank of English Corpus, word frequencies and trends from the Google Ngrams project and this followed an earlier launch of a discussion forum for neologisms in 2004. In May 2015, CollinsDictionary. com added 6500 new Scrabble words to their Collins Official Scrabble Wordlist, the words are based on terms related to and influenced by slang, social media, food, technology, and more. Collins COBUILD Advanced Dictionary CollinsDictionary. com – Collins English Dictionary, American English Dictionary, Thesaurus, French, German, Italian and Spanish

9.
Collins Spanish Dictionary
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The Collins Spanish Dictionary is a bilingual dictionary of English and Spanish derived from the Collins Word Web, an analytical linguistics database. As well as its function as a bilingual dictionary, it also contains usage guides for English and Spanish and English and Spanish verb tables. In 2009, the dictionary was brought to the iPhone & iPad platform, collinsDictionary. com – Internet front-end to Collins Unabridged Spanish Dictionary content